Historical Marker Program

Tullahassee

Wagoner County
Location: in community of Tullahassee
Coordinates: 35.833994, -95.438361
Material: Other (Interpretive panel)
Sponsor(s): Oklahoma Historical Society
Topics: Early Statehood, 1907–1941; Education; Ethnic Diversity; Government; Settlement Patterns; Territorial Period, 1861–1907; Urban Development

Tullahassee is one of 13 All-Black towns, out of more than 50 that once existed, remaining in Oklahoma. While Tullahassee is reportedly the oldest, most were established between 1889 and 1907 as African Americans sought security and control of their own destiny in a segregated world. Most of the towns began to decline in the 1920s and 1930s as rural African Americans faced economic hardships and began to move to urban areas. Tullahassee now occupies the site of Tullahassee Manual Labor School, established in the Muscogee (Creek) Nation in 1850 by Reverend Robert M. Loughridge under the auspices of the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions. A school for Freedmen was established in 1883, and a post office was established 1899. Flipper-Key-Davis University, established in 1914, was the only private Black institution of higher education in Oklahoma until it closed in 1936.